Pubdate: Sat, 02 Dec 2000 Source: State, The (SC) Copyright: 2000 The State Contact: P.O. Box 1333, Columbia, SC 29202 Fax: (803)771-8639 Website: http://www.thestate.com/ Forum: http://www.thestate.com/ultraboard/ Author: Andrew Selsky, The Associated Press U.S. SENATOR MAKES PERILOUS TRIP TO COLOMBIA BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia -- Hard-eyed men with Uzis stood guard as Sen. Paul Wellstone stepped out of a helicopter and into a bulletproof car and drove to a meeting with human rights activists. Hours earlier, police discovered a bomb along the airport road. U.S. and Colombian authorities Friday downplayed the possibility that Wellstone and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson, who accompanied the Minnesota Democrat, were the intended targets of the bomb. Their visit marked the first time a U.S. lawmaker or ambassador had come to the deadliest town in the Americas, a sweltering cluster of cinderblock homes on the banks of the muddy Magdalena River. There was heavy security for the U.S. officials during their three-hour visit Thursday. But Barrancabermeja's 195,000 residents have no such protection: this year alone, 470 of them have been slain in politically motivated attacks, human rights workers say. Massacres are commonplace, and the killers are rarely caught. Wellstone said he made the perilous journey to show support for the human rights activists, who face immense risk. For Wellstone, a former civil rights activist and college professor, his two-day visit to Colombia also was aimed at making a stand against Plan Colombia, a drug-eradication effort being funded by $1.3 billion from Washington. Under the plan, dozens of U.S.-donated combat helicopters will ferry U.S.-trained Colombian troops into cocaine-producing plantations to seize them from insurgents. But while the military is being strengthened, Wellstone says there is no firm plan to provide coca farmers with alternative livelihoods. He fears they will then be driven into the ranks of leftist guerrillas or the rival right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. Moreover, Wellstone is concerned that President Clinton authorized delivery of the aid even though the Colombian government has not met all the human rights conditions set by Congress. "If we continue to waive the (human rights) provisions of the aid package, then the message we are sending to the paramilitaries and the military is that human rights is not important to us," Wellstone said. Wellstone said he asked President Andres Pastrana on Wednesday for the government to bring paramilitary leaders to trial and protect human rights workers. Human rights workers who met with Wellstone with said the AUC was responsible for most of the killings in Barrancabermeja, 155 miles north of the capital, Bogota. There were questions, meanwhile, about who was the intended target of the bomb found on the road from Barrancabermeja's airport to the town. The White House said it did not view Wellstone and Patterson as targets and State Department officials said it wasn't unusual for such devices to be found in Barrancabermeja. Earlier Thursday, Wellstone and Patterson flew aboard a Black Hawk combat helicopter to observe a raid by heavily armed Colombian national police on a plantation near the village of Taraza, 220 miles northwest of Bogota. - --- MAP posted-by: Don Beck